To:Y. A. BERZIN, V. V. VOROVSKY AND A. A. JOFFE

Published:Published in full in 1932 in the second and third editions of Lenin’sCollected Works, Vol. XXIX.

      First published, but not in full, inPravdaNo. 17, January 21, 1925.

      Sent to Berne, Stockholm and Berlin.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,[1976],

      Moscow,Volume 35,

      pages362-363.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

September20,1918

DearComrades,

Today’sPravdahas quoted extracts from Kautsky’s
article against Bolshevism (fromSozialistische
Auslandspolitik).[1]

Kautsky’sdisgraceful rubbish, childish babble and
shallowest opportunism impel me to ask: why do we do
nothing to fight thetheoreticalvulgarisation of Marxism
by Kautsky?

Canwe tolerate that even such people as Mehring and
Zetkin keep away from Kautsky more “morally” (if one
may put it so) thantheoretically.... Kautsky has found
nothing better to do now than to write against the
Bolsheviks, they say.

Isthat an argument? Can one really so weaken one’s
own position? Why, that is only putting a weapon into
Kautsky’s hands!!

Andthis instead of writing:

Kautskyhasabsolutelyfailed to understand and has
distorted in a purely opportunist way

theteaching of Marx on the state

 ” ” ” ”on the dictatorshipof the
proletariat

 ” ” ” ” on bourgeoisdemocray” ” ” ” on parliamentarism

 ” ” ” ” on the role and significance
of the Commune, etc.

Weought to take these measures:

(1)havea detailed talk with the Left (Spartacists and
others), stimulating them to make a statementof principle,oftheory, in the press, that on the question of dictatorship
Kautsky is producing philistine Bernsteinism, not Marxism;

(2)publishas soon as possible in German myThe State
and Revolution;

(3)provideit with at least apublisher’sforeword, as
for example:

“Thepublisher considers the appearance of this booklet
particularly essential at the present moment, in view of
the complete distortion of Marxism, precisely on these
quest ions, in the latest works of Kautsky, who is replacing
the viewpoint of the dictatorship of the proletariat by
philistine social-liberalism in the spirit of Bernstein and
other opportunists.”

(4)Ifit is impossible to publish the booklet quickly,
then get a note similar to the “publisher’s foreword” in thenewspapers(of the Left).

Iwould very much ask you to send (especially addressed
to me) Kautsky’s pamphlet (about the Bolsheviks,
dictatorship, etc.) as soon as it
appears—[2]

—andthen to collect for meallKautsky’s articles about
the Bolsheviks (“Democracy and Dictatorship”, the end
of 1917 or the beginning of 1918; then the article fromSozialistische Auslandspolitik, August 1918)and other
articles, if there were any.

Verybest greetings!

[1]Referenceis to the article “Karl Kautsky and Henriette
Roland-Holst on the Bolsheviks”, published on September 20, 1918 inPravda. The extracts mentioned by Lenin were taken from
Kautsky’s article “Democracy or Dictatorship” in No. 34 of the
magazineSozialistische Auslandspolitik(Socialist Foreign Policy) for
August 1918. The magazine was the organ of the Kautskians. It
was published in Berlin from 1915 to 1922 (after November 1918,
under the title ofDer Sozialist).

[2]Kautsky’spamphletThe Dictatorship of the Proletariatwas
published in Vienna in the autumn of 1918. It distorted the Marxist
theory of the proletarian revolution and slandered the Soviet state.
Lenin in his bookThe Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade
Kautskyand oilier works of this period castigated the leaders of
the Second International, particularly Kautsky, for their
distortion of Marxist teaching on the socialist revolution and the
dictatorship of the proletariat, and further developed Marxist theory
on these vital questions.